Posts Tagged ‘Holy Cross’
The Holy Cross – Life from Death – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Holy Cross Day
Galatians 6:14-18
Jesus was convinced and, ultimately, convincing of others that on the other side of death is life. Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”[i] Here’s the best way for us to lose our life on Jesus’ terms: surrender. Surrender being god of your own life to Jesus Christ.The only way to live life is to allow Jesus Christ to live within us. This was St. Paul’s discovery. In his writings, St. Paul uses one particular phrase more than 85 times: “…in Christ.” He speaks of living his life “in Christ.” “No longer” living life on others’ terms, or even on his own terms. He’s “no longer” doing that. St. Paul says repeatedly he’s now living his life “in Christ.”[ii]
Live your life inside of Christ, who lives inside of you. Surrender your life, surrender your destiny, and take Jesus at his word: that life for you will come out of death. Your dying is the gateway to real life. You will face death many-a-time in this life. Life some days, some seasons, can be such a killer. And that is the very cross that Jesus is sharing with you. Live your life inside of Christ who lives inside you, and you will absolutely, positively, undeniably, miraculously discover how life comes out of death.
There’s two ways to know this to be true about Jesus’ way of the cross: how life can come out of death for you. For one, remember your own life experience. The principal founder of SSJE, Richard Meux Benson, wrote: “A disciple asks Christ, ‘Teach me the law of the Holy Cross, the mystery of our redemption.’ To which Christ replies, ‘My child, you must learn this mystery by experience: Take up your cross and it will teach you all things.’”[iii]And so for you. Your cross is your teacher. Where can you recall how your breaking has been your making, how your dying has led to your rising, where life – real life, amazing life, abundant life – has come out of something that just killed you? This is not about resuscitation; this is about resurrection, the resurrection of your life. Draw on the miracle of your personal experience, how life, absolutely transformed life, has come out of death in your own past. That cycle will repeat: death and life; death and life.
Secondly, if right now you can find no hope but only suffering and desolation in the cross you’ve been handed to carry – what is just killing you now– surrender your life and surrender your death, your many deaths, to Jesus. The weaker you are, the more powerless you feel, the more you will be able to understand this. You have nothing more to lose. Live your life inside of Christ who lives inside of you. He will embody you and enable you. This is Jesus’ way, the way of the cross. And it’s within reach. It’s within Jesus’ reach for you. And that he does: reaches out for you, carries you, makes good on his promise that life, amazing life for you, that comes out of death. It does, and it will.
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ was lifted high upon the cross that he might draw the whole world to himself: Mercifully grant that we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.
[i]Matthew 16:25.
[ii]Saint Paul speaks of the radical turnabout in the management of his former life, using the term “no longer” more than 25 times.
[iii]Richard Meux Benson, SSJE (1824-1915).
The Cross is Everywhere – Br. Keith Nelson
Feast of the Holy Cross
[John 12:31-36a]
The cross is everywhere. The geometric figure of a horizontal and vertical line intersecting one another is an archetypal form, noticed in nature and reproduced by hand by most humans in most cultures. But I am referring only to the cross we know best, in all its stylistic and material variety. Picture in your mind’s eye simply two or three of the probably hundreds of crosses you have seen in your life. I immediately think of the plain wooden cross above the pulpit in the Baptist church of my childhood, the garish crucifix that hung over the temperamental photocopier in the Roman Catholic high school where I taught theology, and a simple brass cross with a tree in the center, a gift from my mom when I told her I might want to become a monk. In flea markets, Bible outlets, laser light shows, ancient catacombs, and war memorials; as two sticks tied together on the corrugated aluminum walls of a shack in Jamaica or Colombia or India or Louisiana; as a gilded masterpiece commissioned by royalty and venerated by pilgrims in Rome or Jerusalem or Canterbury; in polished mahogany, in precious stones, in welded scrap metal, in glow-in-the-dark plastic: the cross is everywhere.
But beyond this literal and material sense, there are at least two other senses in which the cross is everywhere. Read More
Holy Cross Day – Br. Curtis Almquist
“May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world…”Galatians 6:14-18
Jesus was convinced and, ultimately, convincing that on the other side of death – death in its many forms – is life. Jesus says, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”[i] Here’s the best way for us to lose our life on Jesus’ terms: surrender. Surrender the lordship of our life to Jesus Christ, who wants to live within us. The only way to live life – which can be such a killer – is to allow Jesus Christ to live within us. This was St. Paul’s discovery. In his writings, St. Paul uses one particular phrase more than 85 times: “…in Christ.” He speaks of living his life “in Christ.” “No longer” living life on others’ terms or even on his own terms – he’s “no longer” doing that, he says repeatedly – but now living his life “in Christ.”[ii] Read More